By Katalina Siasau

The Green Climate Fund (GCF) is undergoing major reform, that will cover the processes that countries, including Tonga and the Pacific, use to access funds and investments, GCF’s Head of Vulnerability and Communications, Stephanie Speck said today, in Nuku’alofa.

One of the reforms is reducing the timeframe of dispersing funds, from fourteen months to four months.

The Green Climate Fund (GCF) is an international organisation that provides funds for climate finance, for developing countries. GCF has recently approved a US$22.66 million grant for a Tonga Coastal Resilience Project in partnership with UNDP.

However, urgent needs from Tonga and other Pacific Islands to adapt to sea level rise, coastal inundation and erosion, and other natural disasters, are facing a common issue in the slow access to climate finance from GCF and other global facilities.

"We are very much facing up to the criticisms around ease and access and absorption," said Speck.

GCF has reduced the timeframe of approving and dispersing funds, from 14 to four months.

"It used takes us a medium 14 months to then provide the investment funding. This year we have reduced it to four and a half months. You come to us, tell us what you want and you receive the money.

"We know that Small Island Developing States have capacity issues and there may be things that we need to do and adjust with our systems that make it easier for countries to interact with us and that's the process that we're in right at the moment," she said.

GCF readiness strategy has recently been completely redone, so countries now can access $4 million dollars, and Small Island Developing States can access $7 million dollars, over a four year period.

Meanwhile, GCF is currently funding three climate action projects in Tonga amounting to almost $60 million dollars.